Brendan Jones

 One thing he might discover in the attempt: He doesn’t have the first idea of the values of this state he has visited only during refueling stops on Air Force One — the closeness to the land, to blood, to the sound ice shards make on a pane of glass at 40 below. All this might play as curiosity or nostalgia in the Lower 48. But it’s real up here.

We don’t need more greatness in Alaska — just someone who understands what we already have, and is courageous enough to defend it against those who do not.

Brendan Jones (@BrendanIJones), a writer and commercial fisherman, is the author, most recently, of the novel “Whispering Alaska.”